Sir, – Your Editorial on possible gay participation in New York's St Patrick's Day parade (February 15th) was on point save for one pretty major oversight. The law in this realm is quite settled. In 1995, the US Supreme Court ruled on an _analogous controversy (Hurley V Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston), involving a challenge to the ban on gay participation in Boston's St Patrick's Day Parade.
In a unanimous opinion delivered by Justice David Souter (he by no means a bluenosed conservative), the court repeated that because “all speech inherently involves choices of what to say and what to leave unsaid . . . one important manifestation of the principle of free speech is that one who chooses to speak may also decide what not to say.”
In answer to the concerns similarly expressed in your recent Editorial over the “potentially harmful” message advanced by the (private) parade organisers, the court announced that “when dissemination of a view contrary to one’s own is forced upon a speaker intimately connected with the communication advanced, the speaker’s right to autonomy over the message is compromised.”
Food for thought in our own highly-charged debate over speech autonomy and gender rights. – Yours, etc,
Dr SEAN ALEXANDER
SMITH,
Aiken Village,
Sandyford,
Co Dublin.